Another World II, also known as Other World II, is a woodcutprint by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in January 1947.
It depicts a cubic architectural structure made from brick. The structure is a paradox with an open archway on each of the five visible sides of the cube. The structure wraps around the vertical axis to enclose the viewer's perspective. At the bottom of the image is an archway from which we seem to be looking up from the base, and through it we can see space. At the top of that arch is another arch which is level with our perspective, and through it we are looking out over a lunar horizon. At the top of that arch is another arch which covers the top of the image. We are looking down at this arch from above and through it onto the lunar surface.
Standing in each archway along the vertical axis is a metal sculpture of a bird with a humanoid face. In each side archway is a horn or cornucopia hanging on chains. The views from above and below are consistent, placing the statue so that it faces the horn; however, the horizontal view reverses the relative positions of the statue and the horn, and rotates the horn 180 degrees.
The three "birds" and three windows with horns hanging in them are not symmetrically arrayed as they might be if they depicted three mutually orthogonal vertical orientations. As is, the open wall we are looking through opens into a space with three different vertical orientations, but two of them are opposites of each other. Presumably, behind the picture's overall point of view, the same landscape continues behind the viewer in the same orientation as we see it through the window opposite. Of course, from the point of view of the bird at the bottom, we are looking up from the floor and from the point of view of the bird at the top we are looking down through an open roof. Note that this asymmetry requires a further asymmetry to account for the fact that our point of view is not obviously that of another bird. In one wall two windows and horns with opposite vertical orientation share the same wall. In the wall opposite, there is only one window with a horn, which shares the verticality of the overall picture and of the bird opposite. Thus, if the point of view of the drawing is that of another bird, there are four birds and three horns, with one of them being shared between two birds with the same vertical orientation. In order to portray three mutually orthogonal verticalities from the point of view of a third bird, the bird opposite that would have to be rotated 90 degrees, and the window adjacent to the viewer show the naturally oriented landscape behind the hanging horn.
The previous month (December 1946), Escher created a mezzotint called Another World (Other World Gallery). The image in that print is the same as this one except that the arches continue on as an infinite corridor.
The bird/human sculpture is a real sculpture which was given to Escher by his father-in-law. This sculpture first appears in Escher's 1934 lithographStill Life with Spherical Mirror.
Rotation, or spin, is the circular movement of an object around a central axis. A two-dimensional rotating object has only one possible central axis and can rotate in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. A three-dimensional object has an infinite number of possible central axes and rotational directions.
In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle.
A mirror image is a reflected duplication of an object that appears almost identical, but is reversed in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface. As an optical effect it results from reflection off from substances such as a mirror or water. It is also a concept in geometry and can be used as a conceptualization process for 3-D structures.
A proscenium is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch and on the bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame into which the audience observes from a more or less unified angle the events taking place upon the stage during a theatrical performance. The concept of the fourth wall of the theatre stage space that faces the audience is essentially the same.
Stereoscopy is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word stereoscopy derives from Greek στερεός (stereos) 'firm, solid', and σκοπέω (skopeō) 'to look, to see'. Any stereoscopic image is called a stereogram. Originally, stereogram referred to a pair of stereo images which could be viewed using a stereoscope.
Las Meninas is a 1656 painting in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. It has been regarded as one of the most widely analyzed works in Western painting, due to the way its complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and the uncertain relationship it creates between the viewer and the figures depicted.
A 3D projection is a design technique used to display a three-dimensional (3D) object on a two-dimensional (2D) surface. These projections rely on visual perspective and aspect analysis to project a complex object for viewing capability on a simpler plane.
Linear or point-projection perspective is one of two types of graphical projection perspective in the graphic arts; the other is parallel projection. Linear perspective is an approximate representation, generally on a flat surface, of an image as it is seen by the eye. The most characteristic features of linear perspective are that objects appear smaller as their distance from the observer increases, and that they are subject to foreshortening, meaning that an object's dimensions along the line of sight appear shorter than its dimensions across the line of sight. All objects will recede to points in the distance, usually along the horizon line, but also above and below the horizon line depending on the view used.
Axonometric projection is a type of orthographic projection used for creating a pictorial drawing of an object, where the object is rotated around one or more of its axes to reveal multiple sides.
Curvilinear perspective is a graphical projection used to draw 3D objects on 2D surfaces. It was formally codified in 1968 by the artists and art historians André Barre and Albert Flocon in the book La Perspective curviligne, which was translated into English in 1987 as Curvilinear Perspective: From Visual Space to the Constructed Image and published by the University of California Press.
In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure.
Relativity is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in December 1953. The first version of this work was a woodcut made earlier that same year.
Belvedere is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in May 1958. It shows a plausible-looking belvedere building that is an impossible object, modelled after an impossible cube.
Waterfall is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in October 1961. It shows a perpetual motion machine where water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill along the water path before reaching the top of the waterfall.
Rebecca Horn is a German visual artist, who is best known for her installation art, film directing, and her body modifications such as Einhorn (Unicorn), a body-suit with a very large horn projecting vertically from the headpiece. She directed the films Der Eintänzer (1978), La ferdinanda: Sonate für eine Medici-Villa (1982) and Buster's Bedroom (1990). Horn presently lives and works in Paris and Berlin.
A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object or location from a very steep viewing angle, creating a perspective as if the observer were a bird in flight looking downwards. Bird's-eye views can be an aerial photograph, but also a drawing, and are often used in the making of blueprints, floor plans and maps.
Noravank is a 13th-century Armenian monastery, located 122 km from Yerevan in a narrow gorge made by the Amaghu River, near the town of Yeghegnadzor in Armenia. The gorge is known for its tall, sheer, brick-red cliffs, directly across from the monastery. The monastery is best known for its two-storey Surb Astvatsatsin Church, which grants access to the second floor by way of a narrow stone-made staircase jutting out from the face of building.
Makaravank is a 10th-13th century church complex near the Achajur village of Tavush Province, Armenia, located on the slope of Paitatap Mountain. Though the monastery is no longer used for services, the complex is well preserved. There are 4 churches, a gavit (narthex) that serves the two largest of the churches, and other buildings which served secondary roles. At one time, there used to be vast settlements around Makaravank, the presence of which was of great importance for the growth of the monastery.
Haghartsin is a 13th-century monastery located near the town of Dilijan in the Tavush Province of Armenia. It was built between the 10th and 13th centuries ; much of it under the patronage of the Bagratuni Dynasty.
The Nativity is a devotional mid-1450s oil-on-wood panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It shows a nativity scene with grisaille archways and trompe-l'œil sculptured reliefs. Christus was influenced by the first generation of Netherlandish artists, especially Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and the panel is characteristic of the simplicity and naturalism of art of that period. Placing archways as a framing device is a typical van der Weyden device, and here likely borrowed from that artist's Altar of Saint John and Miraflores Altarpiece. Yet Christus adapts these painterly motifs to a uniquely mid-15th century sensibility, and the unusually large panel – perhaps painted as a central altarpiece panel for a triptych – is nuanced and visually complex. It shows his usual harmonious composition and employment of one-point-perspective, especially evident in the geometric forms of the shed's roof, and his bold use of color. It is one of Christus's most important works. Max Friedländer definitely attributed the panel to Christus in 1930, concluding that "in scope and importance, [it] is superior to all other known creations of this master."
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